


until our dreams change to sky

by meritmut



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (of a sort), Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Insecurity, Mild Sexual Content, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, Tragic Romance, linear stories are for people with a consistent grasp of time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 07:58:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13519947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: He might be tempted to think her a dream, if he dreamed of things like the faint scent of sweat on her skin, or the way her hair tickled his shoulder, or the little mole beneath her left ear. He’d teased it with his tongue until she writhed against him that night, but that kind of detail seldom made it into his dreams.As always, it threatened to unmake him.





	until our dreams change to sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [politicalmamaduck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/politicalmamaduck/gifts), [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



> for the prompt "at my worst, I worry you’ll realize you deserve better. At my best, I worry you won’t. (I’ve never been better.)"
> 
> title from 'the sorrow of angels'

Just as he began to understand that there was no universe, no future, no _life_ he could imagine that didn’t in some way include Rey, that she was not a part of, Kylo found himself comprehending another set of truths.

That _wanting_ and _being worthy of_ are as different as blood and snow; that _need_ is not the same as _deserve,_  and all of it meant nothing, if she did not feel the same.

There was a long time when he couldn’t imagine a future at all, when every day came as it came, and passed like a shadow.

That was before her.

How many days lay between then and now?

How many miles, between one person and another?

How many light-years, between your heart and mine?

Too many, he would think, when his lips found hers in the dark and the breath of space between the two of them grew greater than either of them could bear.

Not enough, she would tell herself, when their dreams bled into one in the eternal night and neither of them could turn away from the song that called them to the darkness: nowhere near enough.

 

-

 

The walls were burning, the crimson panels that covered them peeling away to reveal the cold starlit spread of the Grumani sector beyond the glass.

The air smelled of smoke and sweat, the dull crackle of flames filling her ears; the whole world was coming down around them and there he was, holding out a hand to her and offering her a path out of the fire.

Rey hesitated. She was afraid. For the first time, something new and young and anxious bled through the cracks of the courage that had already carried her this far.

It was just the two of them now, their only audience a room full of dead men and an open firmament of stars. She had made herself vulnerable for him again, and so the words that fell from Kylo's lips then landed like a blow.

This wasn’t what she’d wanted, what she’d thought would happen when they stood together again, the last living things left in the ashes. She was brave and fierce and clever but it was hope that gotten her here; hope and faith, naïve though it undoubtedly was.

Those hopes had gone quiet in the face of his declarations. In their place, a cruel voice came to whisper  _foolish girl—to believe you could have been enough._

Rey wanted to laugh, and then to cry. Enough? How could she have been? Not once, not for one _moment_ in her pitifully short life, had she been enough, not even for those who should’ve loved her without qualification or condition, for no other reason than because she was _theirs_. Even for them, she had been inadequate.

Lacking. Deficient.

Nothing.

He had pulled it from _her_ mind and still—and still, oh, how deeply it cut, to hear it said aloud.

He was pleading with her, now. She could see it in his eyes and in the trembling of his hand, hear it in the hoarseness of his voice, and it was a strange feeling to be wanted in this way: with desperation, with certainty, with  _need_.

It was still a new feeling to be wanted at all. Rey found she didn’t want to look away.

So she didn’t.

 

-

 

She put herself beneath the sword before it could fall. He cared nothing for the rebels, had no reason by anyone’s estimation to care (your mother, _your mother,_ she wanted to say, but what did she know of the bonds between mothers and children?) but Rey stood firm and informed him in no uncertain terms that if he wanted her by his side, he would not make her watch them die.

And like that, the Resistance was saved.

She didn’t go with him when he left to take up command on the bridge and order the ceasefire. She couldn’t show herself at his side just yet, not when they alone knew what had happened here, but she had only Kylo’s word that he would keep his promise (and Kylo was who he had to be if they were to have a hope of getting out of this alive) and so as soon as he departed she ran to Snoke’s oculus, heart hammering in her dry throat as she prayed and prayed that she hadn’t doomed herself and every soul on those transports with her foolishness.

Minutes passed, and all at once there was no more cannonfire.

Less suddenly, the colossal craft began to tilt to port.

 

-

 

She was such a small thing before the immensity of the galaxy, her arms wrapped around her slender waist, her shoulders hunched inwards against the chill. Clad only in her sleepwear—which was his, really, and few things in life brought him greater delight than _that_ fact—the starlight shone through the edges of her skin.

She’d always been a woman of compact strength and whipcord athleticism, never well-fed enough to grow truly _soft,_ but there’d been something about her lately—an ephemerality, an _insubstantiality._ Like there was less of her in the world, somehow, like she was…diminished.

Like she was fading, right before his eyes, and what could he do?

Nothing, but draw her close to him and envelope her in his arms like he could hold her together with his own two hands, so that was what he did, pulling her back against his chest until he could feel the warmth of her against all of him and press his nose into her hair.

She leaned into him with a sigh. Her heart beat strongly against the arm he had wrapped around her chest.

“Not much longer, now,” he murmured. He hoped. He couldn’t know, for sure—none of them could. They were stumbling blindly in the dark here, and no one knew it better than the two of them.

“Good,” Rey said softly, her hands coming up to trace light patterns over his bare arms. He was fresh from training, still flushed and faintly damp with sweat. She never seemed to mind.

She had come with him to spar, for a time, but that was in the beginning. Kylo didn’t think she’d left this suite of rooms in days. Every time he returned she’d be sitting by the viewport, gazing out at the sapphire veins of hyperspace or an unfamiliar star-strewn void, the light in her eyes a little further away than before.

Not for the first time he wondered if this was all a mistake: if all he was doing now was leading her deeper into the dark.

Just as he did every other time, he asked himself if he would’ve preferred to watch her leave: if he could’ve borne the knowledge that she’d seen their shared future and walked away from it.

It didn’t matter now, anyway. They’d passed beyond the outermost sector of the Rim weeks ago. Since then it had been one short jump through space after another, a long, blind, uncertain voyage into the unknown.

There was no going back from here. If he was leading her there, at least they were going together.

At least she chose it.

At least it was her choice to make.

 

-

 

When he returned, he had donned the mantle of a commander. His eyes were darker than the walls of night around them as they picked her out of the starlit vastness of Snoke’s chamber.

Abruptly, Rey felt the reality of her position.

She was unarmed, and the rush of fearless optimism that had carried her to the _Supremacy_ had not survived what had followed—her mind invaded, taken apart by that grotesque _thing_  on the throne; feeling a wall come down between her mind and Kylo’s and watching him grow distant from her once again; watching him leave her side. She hadn’t the faintest idea whether it was the soft-spoken young man from her dreams or the cruel masked knight from the forest who returned to her now.

Where was her lightsaber? Had Kylo taken it with him? His own was clipped back onto his belt, a tacit warning if ever there was one, but it wasn’t a threat meant for her—no, the only thing he directed at her was his stare, and all the intensity of a collapsing star contained therein. This time he didn’t hesitate before the dais, didn’t spare the throne so much as a glance: his eyes searched her out the moment he entered the room and then he was moving towards her. His pace was unhurried, there was no need for urgency now and he was having trouble accepting the reality of her presence here, but his long stride carried him swiftly across the floor and too quickly he was standing before her.

Gazing up into his eyes, Rey felt a great wave of uncertainty crest over her from the other end of the bond.

It didn’t ease her nerves at all to know that Kylo was no surer of where they went from here than she was, but it was...something. Better that than the unsettling composure with which he’d greeted her in the hangar, anyway.

“So…” she began hesitantly. It came out softer than she’d expected. There was no echo, either. Somehow she’d thought there would be—that the slightest whisper would reverberate for ever through this enormous vaulted chamber, but her voice was lost in the vast starry breadth of it.

“So,” Kylo was her echo instead.

“What now?”

Why she was asking him, Rey didn't know. Why she was looking to him for certainty or direction, when it seemed the spark of resolve that saved her life had extended only as far as getting them through the fight in one piece and Kylo was now effectively winging it, she couldn't entirely say.

(Then again, her own inspired plan had nosedived into the ground the moment she’d climbed out of the escape pod to let herself be cuffed, and she’d been floundering ever since, treading water with just enough aptitude to keep her head afloat and pretend that she wasn’t on the verge of _utter outright panic,_ so Rey wasn’t sure she could really talk.)

“I’ve taken command,” Kylo informed her, proper and unruffled as though he usurped his master’s throne every day, “and called an end to the bombardment. Your friends may live to see another sunrise, if they’re smart.”

Rey nodded numbly, hating the cold indifference in his voice. “I saw,” she whispered.

“For now,” he continued, “eliminating the last of the Resistance is no longer considered a worthwhile undertaking. If they are to _survive,_ it must remain that way. I have…suggested…that we focus our efforts on a more productive endeavour.”

 _No longer a worthwhile undertaking._ Stars, how many of them were left?

She gave another jerky nod and tried to at least _look_ as though her chest wasn’t caving in, even if she didn’t feel it; that her eyes weren’t prickling and she didn’t feel helplessly, overwhelmingly _lost_. Then she asked the question that had been gnawing at her since he'd left. “So…does this make you…what, Emperor?”

Rey wasn’t imagining the darkened glint of something hungry in Kylo’s eyes, the sudden flare of _possibility_ as he considered her words. It faded, though, when he turned towards the throne, and the corpse still half-seated on it.

There was no remorse in his gaze. There was no anything. It was as though part of him had switched itself off rather than face the enormity of what he’d done.

“He styled himself ‘Supreme Leader,’” he mused, looking down on the dead thing where it lay cut in two.

Rey couldn’t help the snort that escaped her—any more than she could help, when Kylo glanced at her in surprise, gesturing vaguely at the throne and the creature cloven in half and _the room that was still on fire around them_ , and offering by way of an explanation, “it’s just…a little ridiculous, isn't it?”

Kylo’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline, disappearing into the dark curls falling over his forehead. The only illumination in the room came from the remnants of the flames and the starlight flooding in from outside but Rey could swear she saw a trace of colour cross his cheeks.

Her eyes narrowed.

“…and you were considering it.”

Kylo stiffened. “Would you prefer ‘Emperor’?” he enquired, a little sourly, and yes, she’d definitely pricked something there.

She looked him dead in the eye. “I’d prefer _Ben,_ since you’re asking. But I don’t suppose that’s an option.”

“No.” He turned back to the dais, his whole demeanour becoming— _harder_. He was pulling away from her again, losing himself somewhere she couldn’t follow. “Not for this.”

Rey wouldn’t let him.

Moving closer to his side, she laid a hand on his forearm. Kylo looked down at her once more, something heavy and terribly conflicted in his eyes.

 _Together,_ he’d told her.

“For you,” he said simply now, and when his hand came up to cover hers, the leather of his glove soft as butter over her knuckles, Rey understood.

 

-

 

She liked to think she was holding him to his word, but the truth was, had Kylo dispatched a squadron to slaughter the rebels like skittermice in their nest she would never have known.

She wanted to believe she would’ve felt something, in the Force, but—another truth—she didn’t know enough about it to say for sure. Until she could get herself in a room with a comm unit, she had little more to hold to than blind faith if she was to keep from losing her mind to fear and suspicion.

She would do it. She’d survived on less, and for longer.

But—it was _hard_.

 

- 

 

“Hey.”

Her voice recalled him from the view beyond the window, the star-strewn infinite that sang to them both so sweetly even now.

“Hey,” he spoke into her hair, pressing his lips against the crown of her head. Her hair smelled more like her than soap, like she was a couple of days out from her last shower. Kylo wouldn’t admit he liked her that way, warm and soft and smelling of _her_ rather than the synthetic fragrances of the washroom, mainly because he hadn’t yet, despite everything, plucked up the courage yet to admit that he was lost for her at all.

(Oh, he said it in other ways, in every way she let him, but there was something so wildly, terrifyingly _vulnerable_ about the words themselves and he was still afraid, not so deep down that it didn’t write itself plainly across his face at times, that one day she’d wake up and remember that somewhere out there was a life she actually deserved.)

 

-

 

But she hadn’t remembered. It confounded him, instead, how much she seemed to fear that _he_ might leave _her_.

A few nights ago, he’d taken her up against the viewport they stood before now, braced one hand against the glass while the other held her to him by the base of her throat and he murmured into her ear all the sweet, filthy things he wanted for them, every dream that’s ever left him hard and aching when he wakes with her name on his lips. He whispered to her of the future, the future the two of them would build together, and all the things he would give her in it: an empire of verdant worlds, a whole galaxy of gardens for her pleasure and hers alone, a crown of filigreed starlight and a throne made of porphyry and gold— _all of this, every world, every moon I will give you, beautiful, soul, perfect, everything, queen—_ and she had shuddered and sighed and tightened around him as they’d come apart together and it had been, in that moment, the most perfect thing he’d ever felt, just him and her and the glimmer of starlight in her hair, the flutter of her body around him and her pulse under his fingers as he tilted her chin to find her mouth with his own, his other hand leaving the glass to rest—cold enough to make her shiver, and hadn’t  _that_ been nearly enough to set him off again, softening inside her as he was—gentle as anything, over her thundering heart.

She’d met his lips with a languid hunger, chasing him when he pulled away to brush kisses over her jaw, her chin, the corners of her mouth, the tip of her nose, and when he finally drew back to look into her eyes, full and overflowing with all the things he couldn’t and yet  _needed_ to say, she’d leaned in to rest her forehead against his shoulder.

 _I don’t need an empire,_  she’d mumbled into his skin.  _I don’t want a throne. Just stay with me. That’s all. Just stay._

Now he could feel her trembling with more than pleasure or the chill of his touch: now he could feel the cold slipping into the spaces of the night around them. He tightened his arms around her, burying his fingers in her soft hair.

 _I’m not going anywhere,_  he’d promised,  _not without you,_ and then he’d swept her up into his arms and carried her to bed, to _their_ bed, and drawn the covers up around her shoulders, spending the precious minutes while she’d fallen asleep kissing every inch of exposed skin he could reach and trying, as he’d tried unsuccessfully for every day, every hour, every  _instant_ since she stripped the glove from his hand and wrapped her own around it instead, to let the fact that she was  _here with him_ sink in.

It hadn’t yet. He hoped it never would. 

 

-

 

“You’re crushing me,” Rey said lightly, tugging halfheartedly at his forearms. In response Kylo pulled her closer to him, burying his face in the graceful curve of her neck; there, he breathed deep of the warm salt of her skin, the reality of her presence in his arms.

As always, it threatened to unmake him.

He might be tempted to think her a dream, if he dreamed of things like the faint scent of sweat on her skin, or the way her hair tickled his shoulder, or the little mole beneath her left ear. He’d teased it with his tongue until she writhed against him that night, but that kind of detail seldom made it into his dreams.

“Ben—” she was pushing at his arms for real now, trying to loosen his grip. Kylo refused to budge.

“Let me hold you.” He tried not to sound _too_ needy, but even to his own ears it came off like a plea.

“Let me _breathe_.”

Finally, grudgingly, Kylo lowered his arms to her waist, straightening up a bit so she fit properly against him. Her arms came to settle on top of his.

“I like holding you,” he told her mulishly, and it wasn’t quite _I like being with you, near you, talking to you, touching you, kissing you,_ looking _at you,_ but it got his point across well enough.

Rey’s thumbs traced circles over his forearms. It was maddeningly distracting, in the best possible way.

“I like you holding me,” she admitted, her voice so fragile he thought the slightest pressure might shatter it. It was a confession of its own kind, and apparently it was vulnerability enough for her because what came next was coloured with humour, “but I like being able to breathe, too.”

He huffed a laugh, mouthing at her neck until she went soft and pliant against him: he knew, by now, how to do it, how to make her boneless with contentment, how to coax the most delightful little sounds from her sweet red mouth. She let him for a little while, until she felt his desire hot against the small of her back and twisted in his arms, tilting up to steal a kiss and nudge her nose against his.

“Still?” she breathed against his lips, amused and faintly perplexed that his need for her hadn't waned yet.

Kylo frowned. “Always.”

She blushed at that, lowering herself back down so she was level with his collarbones. She planted a kiss on each of them then leaned in to rest her forehead against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her waist again and held her close, wondering at the unforeseen turn his path had taken that had led him here to this moment, where he stood with a girl in his arms and it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

He never wanted to let her out of them, if he could. Rey would have to be the one to let go first.

But she was the stronger of the two, and Kylo was coming to understand that she always had been. One day soon she would realise how little he deserved to hold her like this, to touch and taste and revere her; how unworthy he was to even stand at her side. One day she  _would_ let go.

“Crushing, again,” her voice was muffled in his chest, her hands plucking absently at his waist. Kylo mumbled something that might have been an apology into the slope of her shoulder. He couldn't quite make himself sound sincere about it.

A better man might have.

A better man might have let her leave without her friends' lives hanging in the balance—a better man might not have kissed her, that first time, because he would have known that Rey was meant for a better kind of love.

Kylo had known, but then, he'd never _been_ a better man.

He breathed in the scent of her, bringing one hand up to thread his fingers through her hair again as she sighed contentedly against him.

If it meant finding the strength to face losing her, he never wanted to be.

 


End file.
